


Always By Your Side

by macaroni_meangirls



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Abuse, Alcoholism, Eating Disorder, Gen, but also angst, damian is the softest child, give Janis a hug 2k19, implied eating disorder, protect Janis Sarkisian, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 15:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19443913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaroni_meangirls/pseuds/macaroni_meangirls
Summary: Janis isn't okay. But Damian loves not-okay Janis as much as okay-Janis, and that's never going to change.





	Always By Your Side

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this, I worked really hard on it!! There are some possible triggers but for the most part it's meant to be fluffy angst. TW for alcoholism, abuse, and some eating disorder stuff.

Damian is eleven when Janis comes over for their first sleepover.

She took some convincing to sleep out of her own home, but Damian bribed her with popcorn and photos of his grey tabby, Leonardo diCatrio. So Janis comes over at five o'clock, clutching an overnight bag and stumbling slightly from nerves as she taps on the door. Damian immediately throws it open, grinning. "You're here!"

"Hi..." Janis mumbles nervously, her eyes flickering around slightly as she scans his house. "Is your cat here...?"

"He's around here somewhere," Damian says with a shrug, pulling her inside. "He might not come up to you right away, he can be a little shy-"

Damian's interrupted as a flash of grey fur scampers across the floor, darting between his feet and climbing demandingly on Janis's leg, mewling for her attentions. Janis cracks a tiny smile as she scoops up Leo, showing her teeth a bit more as the cat settles purring into her arms. "I think he likes me...?"

"He's never that nice!" Damian exclaims, staring at his cat in disbelief. "You must be his favorite. Come on, my dad hasn't met you yet, he's excited!"

Janis briefly relaxes at the compliment, but instantly freezes up again at the words "my dad." "Your - your d-dad?" she asks quietly, her voice faltering as Damian pulls her towards the kitchen.

"Yeah, my dad," Damian says nonchalantly, not quite connecting the pieces. "Don't worry, he won't talk to us all night or anything, he just wants to say hi!"

Janis immediately stops dead as they enter the kitchen, staring up at Damian's dad. Both Damian and his father are tall, bulky men, the man standing in the kitchen dwarfing her slender frame. He looms over her like a building, shrinking her and making her feel weak and powerless. She shifts slightly to the side, squeezing the cat in her arms for comfort as she blinks fearfully up at Damian's father, his booming voice shaking the floors underneath her.

Damian stares in shock as Janis lets out a little wail and buries her face in Leo's fluffy grey fur, clinging to the cat like a stuffed animal. She's visibly shaking, her whole body trembling like Damian's flip phone when he gets a call, her face hidden inside Leo's fur. The cat doesn't resist, resting one paw on her hand and allowing her to cry into his fur, leaning against her as she shivers.

"Jan...?" Damian mumbles in confusion, staring at his best friend. "You good...?"

Janis only wails louder, clinging to the cat like a lifeline as she sobs. "I w-want my mom!"

Damian's dad backs off, guessing that her distress is sourced in his presence. "Jan, I can't give you your mom, she's at work, but my mom's downstairs!" Damian yelps, scanning the room for any sign of his mom. "You want my mom? You know my mom, she made you brownies for your birthday, remember?"

Janis nods frantically, still clinging to the cat. Damian prays that she's agreeing to his mom, not just agreeing that she remembers her, and darts down the stairs screaming for her.

Ms. Hubbard takes one look at a shaking Janis and kneels in front of the shivering girl, pulling her and Leo gently into her arms. "Shh, sweetheart...you don't have anything to be afraid of..."

Damian stares helplessly as Janis hiccups pitifully, tears soaking his cat as she cries into his mom's shoulder, frantically gasping something about a wall and a bottle and bruises. He's never felt more powerless in his life, and even when Janis is finally coaxed to let go of Ms. Hubbard and go watch her favorite TV show with him, the feeling persists. As he combs his fingers loosely through Janis's hair, all he can think to do is to make a promise to himself. The next time Janis needs help, whether she's hurt or scared or sick or anything else, she can rely on her best friend to help her.

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Damian is thirteen when Janis comes over to watch TV with him. They marathon American Horror Story until it goes off the air to be replaced by Grey's Anatomy. Pulling faces at the same time when Hot Male Doctor™️ starts sucking face with Hot Female Doctor™️, Damian is instantly ordered to flip the channel, and he's not protesting as he switches to the next show.

A bottle immediately shatters on screen, angry roaring echoing from the room as dark amber liquid drips down the walls, a trickle of blood dripping down a terrified child's face from a stray shard of glass. Before Damian can even reach for the remote to switch the channel, even so much as swear under his breath, Leo flies out of the kitchen and flings himself into Janis's arms, just in time for her to muffle a teary wail in his fluffy gray fur.

Damian turns the TV off, reverting the screen to blackness as he gapes at Janis, her shoulders heaving as she clings to Leo, squeezing him like a stress ball. And Leo, Leo who wouldn't let his dad touch him, who tolerates his mom's affection, who won't let Damian pick him up unless it was his idea, doesn't even protest, laying peacefully in her arms without any resistance at all.

Heart racing at the sudden shift in events, Damian holds his arms out invitingly, leaving Janis free to come to him or keep her own space. Her face red and puffy, shiny tear tracks lining her face, she flings herself into his arms, Leo still lying patiently without even the slightest move towards resistance. In his arms, Janis shivers like a leaf swaying in the wind, hot tears soaking into Damian's blue plaid shirt as she sobs, her fists tugging handfuls of the soft fabric. He pats her back soothingly, wincing as the sharp curves of her shoulder blades push through the thin cotton of her shirt, and remembers that Janis gave him her pizza yesterday, claiming that she wasn't hungry. 

Janis hasn't been hungry a lot lately.

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Janis is finally convinced to talk when Damian finds her swaying on her feet outside the girls' bathroom, eyes half-closed as she struggles to find her balance. 

"Whoa, Jan," he murmurs, tapping her hip to warn her before placing his hands around her waist to steady her. "You feeling all right...? You look pretty pale..."

"'M fine," Janis promises, falling back on his support all the same. "Feel great..." But she still doesn't move to pull away.

"You sure about that?" Damian asks, snapping his fingers under her nose as her head lolls back. "You look half-starved, did you forget lunch money or something?"

Janis immediately tenses like he's cracked a bullwhip at her, whipping her head around to glare at him. "Mind your own business!"

"Okay, okay, whoa," Damian scolds slightly, stung by her sudden anger. "I didn't do anything to you, and I'm not the bad guy here. You wanna tell me who you're really mad at?"

Silence from Janis at first, tension burning in her shoulders as she weighs back and forth, so, so close to telling him. His heart aching for her, Damian reaches out gently, brushing a strand of hair back into her paint-splattered headband. His delicate touch snaps something inside of her, and she goes limp in his arms like a broken glowstick, slumping back into his embrace. Damian gasps as she stumbles, but scoops her up gently, finally depositing her in the widespread arms formed from the roots of the oak tree behind the school. Janis slowly shifts away as he does, reclaiming her space as she draws her knees up to her chest. Damian settles beside her, close but not touching, always there if he's needed. "Who made you so angry?" he asks softly, his quiet voice seeming to carry away from the tree and across the school grounds, asking the sky and the wind and the trees the same question he's asked a million times, only to be me with brooding, hateful silence. 

He doesn't like to imagine Janis as hateful. But she's grown into the word well.

Her long, delicate fingers fiddle with a twig she finds in the grass, eyes studying the slim bit of wood rather than him. "My dad. I'm angry at my dad."

Silence for a moment, angry, contemplating silence. Then Janis continues again, a spiteful edge to her voice that burns like ice and fire to hear from one Damian has always thought of as gentle. "I'm fucking angry at him. He makes me so angry, all the time...I can't get past it. I try to, I try to listen to my mom and my therapist and everyone else, all the voices echoing in my head telling me to fucking get past it, and I can't. I try, I try to sit back and let go and forgive, and then I remember what he did to me, what he did for eleven straight years, to me and my mom and my sister, and I wanna fucking kill him. I want him to come back and show his sorry ass one more time so I can fucking murder him. I don't wanna get past it. I want him dead."

A longer silence now, a gaping maw of a silence threatening to devour them both. Damian stares open-mouthed at Janis, shock pumping through his veins faster than adrenaline, numbing him to the core. Sweet, gentle, artsy Janis shouldn't be talking like this, not about wanting people dead, but she is, and that scares him more than anything else she could have told him.

"But I can't say that, can I? So I go to therapy and pretend I'm doing fine and I think about him, every second of every day. I think about how he'd grab my wrists and throw me against the wall and kick me in the ribs. I think about how he'd push me up against the wall and hold me by my throat till I saw black spots. I think about the shit he called me, dyke and monster and disgrace and fat and disgusting and hippo and whatever other shit he managed to spew out until I hated myself as much as he hated me. I think about how I used to wander around in parking lots looking for change someone dropped because my dad spent all our money on alcohol and then spent the evening beating my mother with the bottle that made him do it. I think about that, and I can't get rid of it, I can't ever get rid of it, because it follows me like my shadow. I can't sleep at night without imagining my door slamming into the wall when he came in drunk, I can't stop thinking about standing in front of my baby sister trying to stop her from getting beaten to death, I can't stop thinking about my mom coming to me after he passed out somewhere and giving me a hug with half her face turned purple from him. He makes me angry, he makes me so, so angry, and now I sit here, and I can't eat without hearing him calling me a hippo, can't dance without hearing him call me a disgrace, can't even think about loving someone without hearing dyke dancing through my ears like a fucking shitberry parade."

Janis snaps the twig in half, two thin pieces falling separate in her hands. She holds them for a moment before tossing them into the grass. "I don't wanna be angry, Damian. But as long as I have to keep thinking about how he treated me, I don't have any other choice."

And then she falls silent once more, and even though Damian is only a foot away, the gap between the two feels a million miles wide.

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"Want a muffin?" Damian calls casually, strolling up to Janis's locker as she fishes in its depths for a textbook. "I got you one on the way here, it's still warm."

Janis eyes him suspiciously for a moment - it's not common for food in Damian's hands to survive long enough to reach its intended destination - but takes it without comment. "Thanks...mm, blueberries. Where'd you get these?"

"The bakery downtown," Damian answers, tapping Janis's shoulder lightly, a code they developed in middle school when he reached to braid her hair and she ducked like he'd swung at her. She nods, pulling her headband away to let her hair hang loose.

"Isn't that like a mile and a half out of your way? You don't have a car, dumbass, that must have taken forever." 

"My mom took me on our way here," Damian replies, feigning injury as he combs his fingers through her hair to tug out the tangles. "So suspicious. You'd think someone was trying to slip arsenic in your food."

"I don't trust my best friend handing me an intact blueberry muffin with a glaze this good," Janis counters, stuffing half the muffin into her mouth anyway. "Especially not someone who would live off a diet of pure carbohydrates, given the choice."

"First of all, like you're any better, Miss 'I-Won-A-Statewide-Pasta-Eating-Contest,'" Damian retorts, giving her half-plaited braid a teasing tug. "Second, I may or may not have purchased myself three cinnamon rolls, which kept me occupied until I turned the muffin safely over to your custody. And stop complaining, or I'll eat half next time." Damian is careful to keep his voice light and joking, but anxiety that Janis is uncovering his scheme pokes at the back of his mind like an irritating sibling. He's been bringing her food since they were thirteen, treats and muffins and sandwiches and anything else he can get into her, the memory of how prominent her bones had grown over the final years of middle school persisting still, even as Janis stands in front of him, healthy and filled out and beautiful. The therapy got through to her, she's not so angry, not so tortured, but he can't break the habit of bringing her food, ensuring that she's eating enough, and most important is that Janis doesn't catch a hint of his plan. Her pride would never survive the blow, and Janis holds her dignity as her most valuable possession, ever the more priceless for how much it cost to regain. 

Janis rolls her eyes so hard they practically flip backwards, a skill she mastered at the tender age of eight and has been zealous in practicing ever since. "Like you would-" But before Damian can discover exactly what she doubts he would do, an ear-splitting wail tears through the hall, drowning out the rest of Janis's words in a wave of pain and fear. 

They make eye contact for a moment before sprinting as one down the hall, knowing all too well that cry for help that led to welling tears and afternoons in the nurse's office, plastering Band-Aids over scrape after scrape. The others may have finally grown tired of playing cats and using them as their mice, but they have found a new victim, and sitting by silently is not an option.

The source of the wailing is easy to find; a group of blue letterman jackets might as well be a screaming signal beacon. Shane Oman stands in the center, a writhing auburn-haired girl that Damian instantly recognizes as the new kid from his homeroom pinned against the unforgiving metal locker behind her. The rest of the football team forms a hemming circle around them, blocking the path of anyone who might consider rushing to her aid. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to do that.

But Damian and Janis are no ordinary humans.

Before he even realizes what's happening, Janis slams her shoulder into the side of a quarterback, sending him stumbling back yelping in pain and giving her an entrance to their circle. Damian rushes to follow her, freezing as he breaks the ranks of the hem of towering athletes.

Janis, visibly trembling from head to toe, stands between the wailing girl and Shane, tears welling in her amber eyes as she folds her arms, refusing to back down from his menacing glare, his towering stance, his worst threats. Janis is terrified by even videos of male violence, startling when Damian so much as comes up behind her without warning. Yet Janis is standing her ground, even as tears start to well in her frightened amber eyes. 

Damian shakes himself quickly, breaking the trance Janis's startling courage has cast upon him. Moving quickly, he shifts the clearly terrified girl away from Shane and Janis, pushing her away towards a clear patch in the crowd of fascinated onlookers. His own hands trembling, he takes his place by Janis, standing shoulder to shoulder with her in solidarity. "Just leave them alone, Shane."

Even as the words leave his lips, he knows it's futile. 

And as Shane's fists start to descend, the ring of his cronies closing in around them, all Damian can do is shove Janis behind him, taking the worst of the blows himself. Because all he knows is that he can't let anything else happen to Janis. She'd kill him for suggesting she couldn't hold her own in a fight, and that's not what he means at all; Janis could kick his ass and has been leaving her mark on Shane since middle school, but what matters is that she shouldn't have to.

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Janis dabs silently at Damian's scrapes in the nurse's office, her lips pressed so tightly that they're as thin as the filing card they had to fill out to explain why they're here. By now, their folders are some of the thickest in the office. 

Damian hisses slightly through his teeth as Janis swipes her alcohol wipe through a particularly painful abrasion. "Sorry," she mutters, pulling away from the reddened flesh for a moment before dabbing at it once more.

"Why'd you do it, Jan?" Damian asks softly, gently touching her shoulder as she studies the scrapes and bruises littering his arms and face. "He wouldn't have hurt her too much, you know that..."

"Do I?" Janis asks stiffly, her knuckles whitening around the wipe in her fist. "He's hurt me plenty, Damian. He's done this and worse to you. And she's smaller than both of us, and she's scared out of her mind, and I'd bet you my savings account she's never been in a fistfight before, coming out from the middle of nowhere like that. He would have done whatever he wanted to her."

"Maybe," Damian concedes, taking a moment to reflect on her words. Janis is right, but that doesn't make her smart. "But why'd you step in? They finally started ignoring us...we're gonna go back to Shane Oman's favorite punching bags. Why'd you do it?"

Janis stays silent for a moment, the corners of her mouth working as she formulates her response, her throat bobbing as she swallows hard. She won't meet his eyes. "Because that was me, Damian. That was me, and it's been me since before I could walk. Pinned, helpless, just waiting to get hit again...that's been me, and as soon as my bastard of a father left off Shane Oman took over. And I'm sick of it, I'm so fucking sick of it, of watching filthy bastards like my father and Shane swaggering around doing whatever they please because they don't care or their daddies can afford to pay their way out of it or whatever the hell makes them think they can do whatever they want. I'm tired of getting stepped on, and I'm tired of other people getting stepped on, goddammit!"

Janis's voice cracks weakly and her shoulders slump, her chest rising and falling heavily as she clenches her fist around the wipe. "I just...I just want it all to stop..."

Damian slowly reaches out, extending his arms to her in a wordless offer. Janis slumps weakly into him, resting her head against his shirt to listen to his steady, soothing heartbeat. The minutes tick by slowly; Damian senses that the best he can do for Janis right now is hold her, and his embrace will always be open, at least for his art freak.

"JanJan," he finally murmurs softly, still holding her close against his chest. "I know you're still not okay sometimes. And that's okay. I'm here to try to help you be okay, because you deserve to feel better, but I love not-okay Janis as much as I love okay-Janis, and I'm not gonna try to rush you. I wish I could do it for you, but when it comes down to it, being okay is something you're gonna have to do on your own, and all I want you to know is that I'm gonna be here for all of it, whether I'm helping or listening or just doing this. I'm always gonna be here for you, and I love you so, so much."

In his arms, he hears Janis sniffle faintly. She can't quite manage a response, the lump in her throat drowning out her voice, but Damian understands the gentle patterns her fingers trace on his back as well as spoken language. He'll always be able to understand Janis.

He holds her in his arms for hours, ignoring bell after bell as it sounds. There will be more bells tomorrow. He'll tell the teachers Janis felt sick and he couldn't leave her alone; they'll let him off with a warning. His friend is more important.

Finally, as the lunch bell sounds, buzzing mechanically throughout the walls of the school, Janis lifts her head, revealing dry, clear eyes, sparkling the way Damian almost never sees. "I wanna go find that girl."

And in that moment, looking into her clear, shining eyes, bright with determination and joy, Damian would take her to find the moon if that was what she asked.


End file.
